On the Beach

The kitchen radio chatters, muttering how
it’s the wrong things that we remember: true.
What comes to mind’s a chirringuito, where
the Med is February-grey, not blue,
and where the season hasn’t started yet.
Scuffed chairs along the edge of winter sand,
two mugs of Nescafe, a smudge of sun,
two chatting women, cigarettes in hand,
their toddlers acting last week’s carnival,
the final night of fireworks and floats,
all fish-shaped – once the town caught shoals to sell.
Their industry is tourists now, not boats.

And this is all: no happenings to fill
a postcard’s blank, no stories to relate
back home. A small breeze, just this side of chill,
ruffles a scrap of awning, and we wait
for everything to carry on like this
where time has slowed and stretches out between
one uneventful moment and the next
to frame this faintest pencil sketch, this scene.